I got to Ninh Binh by following roughly the same route I had taken to Ha Giang. This involved getting a bus from Meo Vac, which dropped me off in Ha Giang. From there I got another bus to Tuyen Quang, where I was unexpectedly dropped-off and had to get another, early morning bus to Hanoi. From there I got another bus to Ninh Binh.

Whilst I was in Meo Vac, I had to enquire as to what the bus timetable was. This consisted of asking a bloke outside of what looked like the main market hall, who said that buses to Ha Giang left at 09:30. As I had no other information to go on, I decided to get this bus and it was him driving it the next day. We stopped half-way for lunch, when everybody got off the bus and went to one of many local cafes. I followed the bus driver and got some good beef soup, but the woman tried to charge me 50 000 VND for it, despite it only being worth about 20 – 30 000 VND. Luckily, I quizzed them on this and the man chuckled and asked me for 25 000 VND. Once in Ha Giang, I sat at the bus station and contemplated my next move. There were many options and as I didn’t want to spend another night in Hanoi, I could either get a sleeper bus, which meant waiting for about 5 hours in Ha Giang, or get a local bus, to Tuyen Quang and spend the night there. As I wasn’t sure what the accommodation situation was like in Tuyen Quang, I was considering waiting for a night bus when another bus, bound for My Dinh bus station in Hanoi, turned up. It was stopping at the ticket office where the bus station officer I had spoken to earlier was sitting. The bus conductor asked me if I was going to My Dinh, I said yes and he told me to get on the bus. I only had 150 000 VND on me and the cost of the journey was going to be 150 000 VND, so I decided to get on and see what happened. Half-way through, the conductor started being overly friendly and in Tuyen Quang they decided to stop the bus and kick everyone off. As I had paid to get to My Dinh, I refused to get off until I got my 50 000 VND back. At the end, I was the only one left on the bus and they had driven round most of Tuyen Quang before giving me my money back and asking me to get off.

I was left in what looked like a postal sorting office, which seemed to be run from a family’s front room. They explained that this happened fairly regularly and it was actually illegal, but the police didn’t do anything about it as nobody reported it to them. I got taken to a restaurant where an English teacher from one of the nearby families spoke to me and told me that there was another, private bus leaving from the same place at midnight. I decided to wait for this and amused myself in the family’s front room in the meantime.

At midnight, I was ready and waiting on the bus, but the driver did not show up until about 01:30. They had given me apples in the meantime so I wasn’t too concerned, but at about 05:30 in the morning the bus stopped at a station in Hanoi that I had never been to. It may have been My Dinh, but I walked around for a bit in the maze of streets and alleyways until I emerged at a main road. Luckily, I recognised where I was from my previous visit to Hanoi and went and sat in one of the previous hostels I had stayed in until I had planned my trip to Ninh Binh. Later that day, I got on a bus to Ninh Binh.

The bus to Ninh Binh was straightforward and once in Ninh Binh, I had to negotiate the usual maze of motorbike riders and people wanting to sell you hotel rooms. One of these had actually got on the bus as soon as it had stopped and as I was the only westerner, he took some persuading before he realised that I wasn’t interested. I got some directions from a traffic officer and found the best place for hotels.

I eventually found somewhere that I liked the look of and spent the evening planning what I was going to do in Ninh Binh. As I had come here on the recommendation from someone else in another hostel, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do and decided to go to the Cuc Phuong National Park. After getting up slightly later than I should have done the next day, I went to the bus station to see if there were any buses to Cuc Phuong, but there weren’t. I went back to the hotel and decided to rent a motorbike, but the man renting it to me decided against it and recommended against me riding it on the main road, as I didn’t have much experience. It was a busy road and a lot of people were travelling for the Tet holiday, but I think it was mainly because of a lack of insurance from their side. Deciding against the bike, the same man took me to the Flower Market instead, where the local Vietnamese people were buying and selling flowers and trees for the lunar new year festival.

The next day, I decided to leave and the debacle I described in the Being Ripped-Off in Vietnam post occurred. After getting my bus ticket, I was tired of what the bloke in the hotel was telling me that I could and couldn’t do, so I rented a bike from him and went off on the main road to the Kenh Ga Boat Village, which was fairly close. I practised my bike-riding skills on the local road before setting off and having no problems whatsoever.

On my return to the hotel, I found all my stuff where I had left it and waited around for the bus to Dong Hoi. This arrived at around 22:00 when I got on it and settled down for the journey to Dong Hoi.